


Gravity on Mars

by miabicicletta



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Post Episode 1x07 The Hub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their congruence has been offset ever since she skipped off their neat, precise coordinate plane and tried to save them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravity on Mars

There is a problem on his mind. It’s been lodged there in his brain for some weeks now, bothering tremendously. It follows him to bed, and even into sleep, then rises with him each day, nipping at his heels in the lab and eating away at his concentration. Distracting. 

He turns the microchip over in his gloved fingers, admiring the neat, silver smallness of such a powerful thing. It is what he appreciates above all else: simple, practical design. The certainty that came from knowing this chip's specs and how it would suit his purpose. Leo Fitz likes precision. Exactitude. His faith belongs to the warm, full-blooded reason of an ordered and rational universe. 

As a small boy, he often delighted his mother by calculating the grocery bill before the cashier had a chance to tally everything up. His father had been less amused. Oh, it had been a source of pride, at first, especially for his last son to be taking an interest, asking after the work he did. Telephone repair wasn’t grand. He found it less endearing when a boy not yet nine began seeing things he didn’t. Pointing out incorrectly aligned couplings. Findings mistakes the managers had overlooked. That kind of thing got around. Fast. After that, there were no more trips with Leo round to repair sites. No more climbing lines or tinkering with generators. “It’s starting to go to the boy’s head,” his father growled. “Startin’ to think he’s a fuckin’ Einstein.” 

Liam Fitz’ great error was in mistaking his son’s overabundance of intelligence with a vanity for it – the first of many misunderstandings in their relationship. A relationship further complicated by Callum and Patrick, two fallow-minded elder sons who’d cultivated a certain wild expectation of the Fitz progeny: one of bloody lips and rugby matches and competing feats of graceless strength. That, _that_ , was a legacy to be respected in his father’s world, a place not far removed from the hardscrabble slums of Glasgow.

Leo learned young that his father did not care about all the things he did. He did not wonder why the moon hung in the sky, didn’t know the bright, _good_ feeling that came when you took something apart and put it back together, only better. He did not ask as to how birds and planes could fly in the air, but not people? How did nuclear energy work? What _was_ energy? How cars were powered and satellites signaled and what was the half-life of radium?

His father was not curious about the invisible bonds that held the universe together, or how gravity was different Mars. He did not love the way Leo loved, with wide eyes and a furious mind, set to task. He did not question. It was not in his nature to do so, and even if it had, it would not have been his place. Not much was expected of a utility worker from Drumchapel who hadn’t finished secondary school. 

(His son, with his endless questions, and so used to having to supply his own answers, worked out a crueler, far simpler logic for his father’s indifference.)

The raw, volatile emotions that ran between Liam Fitz and his youngest boy went deep, and stayed. By the time Leo left for Oxford, each had left their mark on the other; words became wounds that lingered and did not heal, leaving the old scars of older scores. What few traits they did share were a mutual stubbornness and a sense of pride as pernicious as it was resolute; it was little difficulty to see why a cold, distance went untested between them until the day in his third year at Trinity that Liam Fitz died. 

Twisting the screwdriver, Fitz removes the circuitry panel on the damaged drone. Green and blue wires run along the casing, sending the current from one board to the next. Easy to remember, what does what. Green and blue. Adamite and argon-ion beams. Variations on a sonic screwdriver. The colors of Celtic FC. 

Fitz does not think of his father often, but when does, he thinks of failure.

There’s a capacitor that needs to be replaced on the primary circuit board. Pitch and yaw will need to be recalibrated in the morning. He’s been working slowly tonight; normally he’d have had time to do it. Except his hand won’t stay steady. He can’t seem to focus, and he doesn’t have to look more than a few degrees to his left to know why. The problem he cannot fathom, cannot begin to resolve.

She’s been on his mind constantly, disrupting his thoughts with her sweet, messy _Jemma_ -ness. On some level, she’s always been this way: crossing the lines all over their tidy – well, his half was tidy – lab, leaving her projects in his space, flitting from station to station, pushing him around as she worked at his elbow, at his side. The two of them in tandem, moving in parallel. Jemma so sunny and excited over her work, oblivious to everything in her excitement. 

They haven't been that way for a while. Their congruence has been offset ever since she skipped off their neat, precise coordinate plane and tried to save them all. He never knew she was that brave. 

He used to see the pair of them standing apart from the rest of the team. Discrete entities, of decidedly different stuff than actual, passed-the-tests, on-the-books field agents. They didn’t need that kind of bold courage. They were just the techs, propelling themselves up by their brainpower and tagging along for the ride. But he’s seeing it all from a new perspective now. Her tenacity partitions the two of them, changes where and how they fit in. It makes her more like the Cavalry than him, or worse, more like bloody _Ward_. They all have it: the blind, nervy guts it takes to stand in the line of fire knowing it might be the last thing you do. Even Skye has what he doesn’t, in her own way. Harping her outsized political beliefs, standing up to the titans of international security. 

It isn’t that he doesn’t want that. Because Fitz does. He _wants_ to be brave. Do the secret agent thing, lead the charge and take down the bad guys. Throw himself out of an airplane after his partner. Save the girl. 

Only he isn’t. He’s not made of specialist material. He can’t just take a man’s life then take down ten more. In fact, he was perfectly happy back at SciOps, and if he’d like to stay safe and snug in his lab for the next fifty-odd years or so, he doesn’t see what’s wrong with that. Even as part of their rag-tag mobile team, he’d be quite content to hunker down on the Bus, away from monsters and aliens and renegades functioning across all bands on the spectrum of human cruelty. He knows the range of it well enough. He does not care to investigate higher frequencies.

Except everything is upside down now. The equation changed the day Jemma sorted herself into Gryffindor at 9.8 m/s2 , revealing variables he hadn’t accounted for. Constants he hadn't given accurate measure. It’s got him flustered, all this foundering with unknown data in an incomplete set. He isn’t quite sure what to do now that he’s added it all up. There’s no certain trajectory for this kind of fall.

The chip slips into place. He reaches for the soldering iron, dropping a small bead into the damaged board. 

“All right, there,” Jemma announces. She stretches, cat-like, and tosses her goggles onto her work station. “I don’t know about you, but I am _famished_. Let’s call it a day, shall we?” 

“Sure,” Fitz answers. 

She hangs her lab coat on the back of her chair, unties her hair, letting it fall across her shoulders. “So, I thought you could use a laugh when you got back from your mission, so while we were at The Hub, I downloaded _The Science of Doctor Who_ ,” she says, her tone hanging quote marks around the title. “Which I think we can agree is _really_ the most ridiculous name for a special. They might as well call it what it really is: _The Magical Plot Devices of Doctor Who_ or _This Week’s Madcap Whatever That Stephen Moffat Thought Might Work on Doctor Who_.” She laughs. A bright, bubbling sort of sound that tickles just to hear. “So, shall I scrounge us some dinner from the kitchen?” She looks at him, unguarded and hopeful. The bravest girl. 

She cocks her head. “Fitz?” 

“Sounds perfect,” he says, not quite smiling, not quite _not_ smiling because although, yes, this is serious and he doesn’t know what comes next, it’s Jemma. He can only smile. 

“Brilliant,” she says, smacking the counter. “My bunk in half an hour,” she calls, the lab doors swooshing open. He turns back to the circuitry.

“Fitz.” Jemma presses her hand against the door, watching him.

“Yeah?” 

She stands there, looking at him for a long, silent moment. She shines a little brighter. “I’m really glad you’re back.” 

He watches her go, his breath short, as though air has gone out of the room. He feels light and weightless, like one of his drones, hovering steadily in the air like the perfect metal beasties they are. 

Leo Fitz does not fool himself. He is not an agent like Ward or May, however much he professes to be their equal. He isn’t the strong, stalwart son his father wanted him to be. But he feels brave because of her. Like he could do anything so long as she was near, and even if their orbits have gotten out a little out of sync, it doesn't matter. They are different in a thousand ways, right down to their specializations. But he's finding even that works to their advantage, because everything that wide-eyed boy grew up to learn was really only part of the answer. His thoughts never seem stop to spinning under her influence, and he can't help discovering new things for it. 

Like just how many invisible bonds there truly are holding the universe together, and some have nothing to do with electron shells or atomic mass. 

How gravity on Mars still means falling.

That the half-life of love is forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> Text edited slightly from original version. That last, perfect line belongs to Junot Diaz, from the short story collection _This Is How You Lose Her._


End file.
